For the first time, the United States officially declared, on Monday March 21, that the violence of the Burmese army against the Rohingyas constituted genocide, an initiative to which militants of this Muslim minority reserved a cautiously positive reception.  

"I have established that members of the Burmese military committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017," US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken said in Washington.

Evidence shows "a clear intent behind these atrocities -- an intent to destroy Rohingya, in whole or in part," he added.

"The intentions of the army went beyond ethnic cleansing, to go as far as the real destruction" of this minority, according to him.

He said this is the eighth time since the Holocaust that the United States officially recognizes the existence of genocide.

"A series of independent and impartial sources"

The Secretary of State was speaking during a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, which features an exhibit called "Burma's Path to Genocide."

Antony Blinken said he made his decision "based on an analysis of the facts and the law carried out by the State Department", fed by "a series of independent and impartial sources, in addition to our own research".

He notably cited an American diplomacy report dating from 2018, focused on two periods, the first from October 2016, the second from August 2017. "In both cases, the army (Burmese, editor's note ) used the same techniques to target the Rohingya: razed villages, murders, rapes, torture," he said.

He estimated that the 2016 attacks "forced around 100,000" members of this Muslim minority to flee to Bangladesh, and that the 2017 attacks "killed more than 9,000 Rohingya and forced more than 740,000 of them find refuge" in this neighboring country.

This 2017 military crackdown is now the subject of genocide proceedings before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, the highest court of the United Nations.

With AFP

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